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EMD-81-96 1 (1981-06-29)

handle is hein.gao/gaobabccm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: UNITED STATES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE 1570 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20548 74MlGY AND MININIfAL DIVISION B-197224 June 29, 1981 The Honorable James G. Watt Secretary of the Interior Dear Mr. Secretary: 115706 Subject: jFollow-up Report on Domestic Aluminum Resources: Dilebmas of Developmentj (EMD-81-96) Concerns about supply disruptions and price gouging that could endanger aluminum production in this country have spurred Bureau of Mines research on processes to manufacture alumina from nonbauxitic ores. The United States has no large bauxite deposits but it has plentiful deposits of other aluminum ores if the technology can be developed to use them economically. Last July, however, GAO reported to the Congress that Bureau of Mines research in this area was fundamentally misdirected (see EMD-80-63, July 17, 1980). A copy of this report is enclosed. In March you testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space about your interpretation of the National Materials and Minerals Policy Research and Development Act of 1980 (30 U.S.C. 1601). Your views heralded a reemphasis of the Department of the Interior's primary mission, fostering domestic minerals development. while the Department's primary research and development emphasis was to be toward production of strategic and critical minerals, you expressed the belief that emergency measures under strategic stockpile and defense production legislation were necessitated by the absence of a domestic minerals policy. Domestic production is the Department's preferred answer to minerals availability problems. Since your testimony, bauxite and alumina are scheduled to be added to the critical minerals model of the Office of Minerals Policy Research and Analysis, and the Bureau of Mines program funds for mineral research have been revised. However, we question the understanding within the Bureau of Mines and the Office of Minerals Policy Research and Analysis of what your testimony implies for the Department's earlier opposition to our alumina report's recommendations. Although that report was highly critical of both management (008443) (2 T/1

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